Targeted offers and preferred discounts are well-known in the retailing business. The idea is to entice additional or preferential customer purchases by presenting offers a particular customer is more likely to appreciate. Currently, several methods are used to present these offers. For example, discounts or coupons are offered on future purchases of the same or competitive brands of a product the customer is now purchasing; coupons are offered via dispensers located near the associated products; or targeted discounts are offered based on a customer identifier and a recorded prior purchase history for that customer.
Where an electronic display is available for an individual customer, such as a device mounted to a shopping cart or a hand-held device, the offer is made based on the current location of the customer. For example, an electronic coupon for a particular brand of soft drink is offered when the customer is in the soft drink aisle. However, to implement this method, the current location of the customer must be known, requiring an expensive location detection system which involves numerous sensors throughout the store. The current store layout must be known as well and stored in a database. Since the store layout may change often, expensive and frequent maintenance of the location information in the database are required.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a method and system for providing location-based targeted information without requiring location sensing. The method and system should provide such information without requiring knowledge of the current location of the customer or knowledge of the store layout. The present invention addresses such a need.